


turpentine erase me whole

by super_fast_jelly_fish



Category: No Fandom
Genre: F/F, First Meetings, Meet-Cute, Pre-Relationship, Steampunk, i guess, one dumb robot and one dumb human, steampunk lesbians, they are dumb and i love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 09:05:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18913837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/super_fast_jelly_fish/pseuds/super_fast_jelly_fish
Summary: there's no one else around for miles. there shouldn't be anyone around for miles. why is the trash moving and talking?





	turpentine erase me whole

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i got the title from honeybee by steam powered giraffe

The junkyard was always quiet, and that was the way she liked it. She liked how she could putter around at her own pace and not have to worry about being watched. She liked the  _ clank  _ of scrap metal against her plated hands and the  _ clink  _ of spare parts colliding into one another inside her bag. The quiet of the junkyard made it easy for her sound-taker-inners to process the sounds.

The junkyard was, expectedly, full of junk, which she also greatly liked. She had a little place to recharge holed out of a weak spot in the tightly-packed dirt walls, and the space around where she fit to plug into the outlet on the wall was filled with trinkets she’d found on her daily excursions. Not just shiny things, though that was what she initially went searching for. One time she’d needed to locate a cloth, to help her keep her own shell burnished, and what she’d come across was a frilly round piece of clothing that fit nicely around her waist. When she had finished polishing her plating, she kept the pretty cloth for herself. Her collection only got larger from there.

Collecting was only part of her day. If she spent all day searching for shinies and pretties she was entirely sure there’d be no room in her home for her to plug in. In that way, she was grateful to have a purpose to keep herself busy.

She was a trash-disposal unit, #847 of her designation, though in secret she had always liked the name Chomp. It was what she did. She chomped.

After she had finished her collecting for the day, she would walk a few miles away from her hovel to the center of the Pile. There was a hole in the steel sky-ceiling that lowered into a cone where every seventy-two hours a new load of trash would be dumped. Chomp couldn’t consume it all at once, so she’d eat her fill and return the next day to continue the job. It was far from an entertaining job, and tedious at that, but she was helping the city upstairs. And she always saved a snack to keep her going that she could eat after she transferred all of her newly-stored power into the plug in the wall. She was being helpful. Chomp liked being helpful.

Chomp didn’t like being alone.

She liked the quiet of the junkyard but the emptiness was… less than optimal. There was nobody else down here except Chomp and the Pile for miles and miles. She was lucky, in a way, that she had no one to talk to, because when she did she tended to get overexcited and short-circuit. Doing that down here would be bad. There was nobody to fix her down here. If she blew a gasket ranting to the air about her pretties and her shinies, that was that. Chomp would lie prone and vacant for however long she was alone. Possibly forever. Probably forever. She didn’t want that to happen.

One can only imagine Chomp’s surprise when one day she heard a very loud noise that was very not of her own creation. It startled her, and she rushed to find the source.

A very odd piece of trash had found its way into the pile. It was moving. Chomp didn’t see moving pieces of trash very often. She approached with caution.

The anomaly was shaped oddly, its silhouette oddly similar to Chomp’s own. It reminded her of the tiny figures that sometimes fell into the Pile, ones with bonnets and chubby fingers and exaggerated features and rosy cheeks. Unlike Chomp, the strange figure had skin that looked soft to the touch, a pleasing deep color that she thought was much better than her own tarnished bronze. It was covered with cloths that looked alright, but didn’t have nearly enough frills to be anything Chomp herself would wear. These clothes were clean and simple, a cotton white top that left the strange thing’s arms on full display and dark grey pants that gave way to clunky laced-up boots. Chomp did like the boots. Maybe she could take them, if she could find a way to make the new thing stay still.

“Hello?”

The new thing had seen her. More alarmingly, the new thing could  _ talk. _ Chomp ducked behind a mound of junk.

“Is anybody there?” The sentient trash piece continued. “I won’t hurt you if you won’t hurt me.”

Chomp’s vocal box groaned. She hadn’t used it in a long time. (See the above explanation on short-circuiting). But. She wanted to talk to somebody.

_ “Hello,” _ Her voice was garbled and very obviously distorted. The gears in her throat nearly stuck in place multiple times as she gritted out one singular word. Chomp guessed that maybe she’d been silent for longer than previously estimated. It was a shame there wasn’t any oil down here to ease the process along.

The other being startled at her greeting, seemingly shocked at receiving a response. “Hi,” She made a peculiar expression, pulling her mouth flat with the corners upturned and her teeth on display. They were white and smooth. Chomp’s teeth were steel and serrated. The unfamiliar features intrigued her. “I’m Emmeline. Do you have a name?”

_ “Yes.” _ Chomp forced out.

The intrusion called Emmeline paused for a moment, waiting for something, though Chomp couldn’t tell what. She’d answered a question, and Chomp had provided an answer.

“Could you tell me what it is?”

Oh.  _ “Sanitation Unit 847.” _

Emmeline tilted her head slightly to the side. “Golly. That’s a mouthful.”

_ “Chomp.” _ The automaton continued, though what prompted her to do so she wasn’t sure.

“Pardon?” Emmeline looked understandably confused. She reached up to touch her earlobe, most likely subconsciously. The motion pushed up a piece of her tied-back hair that had fallen over the side of her head. It was a dark shade of charcoal. Chomp’s hair was smoother, and permanently chopped in a long bob with fringe. She wanted to know how different Emmeline’s wavier locks would feel against the sensors in the ends of her fingers.

_ “You could call me Chomp.” _

Emmeline made that expression again, lips turning up at the sides. “That’s a nice name. I like it.”

Chomp’s mental processors whirred.  _ “Thank you.” _

A beat passed. Chomp continued her systematic examination of her new companion, and Emmeline appeared to do the same. Chomp wondered what Emmeline thought of her. Surely she had seen other automatons like herself up Above. That’s where she was from, wasn’t it? Soft skin, bright eyes, and a smooth voice. Emmeline was a  _ human. _ Humans lived up Above. What was she doing Under?

Chomp’s examination was interrupted by a loud noise, a growl, that seemed to come from Emmeline’s stomach. The robot tensed and automatically shifted into a more defensive position, hands raised unthinkingly into fists.

“Dreadfully sorry about that.” Emmeline displayed her teeth again, her mouth this time turning in a more sideways, downturned expression. A frown—no, a wince—no, a  _ grimace. _ Chomp’s language index was in dire need of an update.

“But,” The human continued, “Would you happen to know if there’s any place I might find food down here? I’m starved.”

Chomp began to gesture towards the Pile they stood upon, again automatically. She consumed trash. She assumed humans did the same.

The widening grimace on Emmeline’s face likely indicated otherwise. “You want me to eat the garbage?”

Chomp’s arms stretched from indicating the floor to the atmosphere around them.  _ “There’s nothing else here.” _

“Well, then I guess I’d better start searching.” Emmeline shrugged her shoulders and began rooting around at the very top of the Pile.

_ “Yes. You’d better.” _ She had no intention of joining the human in her quest, but somehow the automaton ended up on her knees right beside the girl. She had a feeling they might be looking for a while. 

**Author's Note:**

> pls comment it would mean the world to me!!!


End file.
